Scaling up for impact

Caroline Hartnell’s article in the June issue of Alliance on the Mott Foundation and scaling up (‘Life in the old model yet?’) set my mind whirring. Successful scaling up is hard to achieve and here was a foundation story with real substance and lessons. As the thoughts settled, three questions stayed with me: what does scaling up actually mean now? What do we do about a tendency to confuse means (scaling up) with ends (impact)? How do foundations know they are scaling up successfully?